Most people today have more than one telephone number where they can be reached, such as a home telephone number, a cellular telephone number, a work telephone number, etc. In order to reach a person, a caller or calling party sometimes has to make multiple calls. For example, a calling party may unsuccessfully reach a called party at their home telephone number (e.g., the call is not answered or the number is busy), and may try to reach the called party at their cellular telephone number. If the called party is unsuccessfully reached via the cellular telephone number, the calling party may try to reach the called party at their work telephone number. Such a process is frustrating, time consuming, and costly for the calling party.
Some simultaneous ring services exist today, but such services are terminating services (i.e., initiated by a called party rather than by a calling party). These terminating services permit the called party to define how their telephones will ring. For example, a subscriber (e.g., a called party) to a terminating service can have their home and cellular telephones ring for every incoming call to their home telephone number.